My Mainline Mastery of War Profiteering

[2ndsegment]

As I assess the grand binding of very important people I have met I knew them not as opportunities but rather as focusses of criticism. This caused me in my use of the Internet to pursue a path that would seem to be far beyond my status. There I was on a rainy day standing in the elevator car of building 18A at Douglas Aircraft's C division headquarters on Lakewood Avenue when a man in a very crisp grey overcoat and steel rimmed glasses gets on. It's James S. McDonnell who has just completed his merger of McDonnell Aircraft with Douglas Aircraft. He looks over and I acknowledge him by saying "Not such a good day for Southern California weather." He maintains his space.

Now a bit different. I am at the Inertial Guidance Test Symposium which is held at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. I'm shifting my gaze in a room being used for a mixer and I recognize an icon of the industry. It's Dr. Charles Stark Draper, and he is alone and sort of lost in thought and in a far off gaze. I keep my caution. In between I bought a new house in a middle class neighborhood I did not recognize as the same name of where the Wright Brothers demonstrated their Model B to the Army, College Park, East. A Person I meet later says " You are a War Profiteer." The pilots I know at "Top Gun" are buying homes in Rancho Bernardo near San Diego.

In the early 2000's I look in depth into Thomas Sopwith who was accused and settled down to life on his sailboat "Endeavour." A $42,500 house with a 30 year mortgage purchase in the early 1970's as the Viet War was ending hardly seems in the same league. Then later I find my experience with the Po Lock at Sault Sainte Marie and taconite freighters has and odd tie to Bill Boeing's leaving the company he founded and going off in his sailboat "Taconite. John D. Rockefeller pursued investments in this iron ore at a time I associated with hematite, based on the closing of mines in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and not pellets of this less rich ore and Lake 1100 foot freighters.

The advent of Cost Effectiveness and Operations Research brought a discipline to Military Aircraft procurement that followed in the foot steps of Systems Engineering and the two Bekins Vans of proposal documents per prospective contractor for CX-HLS with it's Requirements Allocation Sheets (RAS) and it's System Functional Flow Block Diagrams (SFFBD) all tied to detailed cost estimates and times to preform. In building 13 where I had a single drafting table to myself to plot out the intercept with the Apollo capsule by a KC-135 with a modified nose to accommodate a steerable VHF voice communications dish, the major other occupant was the CX-HLS proposal team. They had tall walls and individual offices. I had the great expanse and overhead trusses and lights of a former C-133 production line.

After the CX-HLS became named as the C-5A "Galaxy," and AFM 375-5, it's procurement document was condemned, I was given the task of shepherding the C-X proposal monitored and documented to a thin single document, AFR-210 to present a commercial derivative of the DC-9 short range transport (about 1200 s m) as a 2000 n m aeromedical transport suitable not just for domestic movements but as options for PACAF and USAFE.

In 1976, I attended the Orange County boat show and saw a 14 foot "Skipper" fiber glass sail boat in green and white and also orange and white. I stretched my resources and bought the green and loaded it into the rear of my 1967 Chevrolet C-10 with 8 foot box. It has oar locks and you could also skull it with the rudder. It was gaff rigged to go under bridges. My boss's son had a 14 foot "LIDO" class racing sailboat with very well provisioned wire rigging. Mine was rope and cleats.

I attended one session of a ground school for Private Aircraft Flight Training at Fullerton Junior college and learned about weather and the difference between high and low wing and Lycoming and Continental 4 cylinder air cooled engines. I went camping on the Isthmus of Catalina Island in foxgloves with the Y Indian guides and on return found my youngest son sitting on the porch. "I wrecked the car." My wife proudly proclaimed. Even with a bicycle Fullerton was too far to continue.

I had evaluated the design of the weapon delivery system for the A-4M "Skyhawk" that allowed it to compete with the A-7 "Corsair II" that had an Integrated Light Attack Avionics System (ILAAS) which included a stable (inertial) platform, a head up display, a radar, and the IBM 4PI computer. Ours eventually became similar to the ARBS on the Harrier. The Skyhawk with the P-408 version of the J-52 and the integrated weapon delivery system could take off from a SATS strip on land or a carrier with a bit more payload of a certain type that was used for the service assessment than the A-7E. With that on board Sam Giesey, the Chief Engineer told me, "If you cause the fly away cost of the Skyhawk to go over 1 million dollars, I will break you!"